The majority of gamers do not care because the games being released today aren't worth saving. They are all symptoms of the same root cause. Quality went down immensely in the 2010s.
This has happened to other media, and it was inevitable that it would happen to games. What eras of movies or music do you think of when you consider those collections? Why would gaming be different?
Got bitten by the deceptive nature of Nintendo "game key trash". Purchased a game online without reading carefully the description. Sent it back and bought a SteamDeck.
I can't recall if the seller even put the correct visuals: game key trash have a banner telling that they are plastic waste and you should instead give all the money to nintendo by using eshop.
yeah the backlash against sony is focusing on the wrong detail, disks don't mean ownership and digital doesn't mean you can't own it
the disks themselves are largely a relic already, not enough storage for some games... and I don't recall a game I've played recently that didn't require a download on first play
it would be nice to have some regulation that at least requires games to have some sort of labelling that indicates a minimum length of support for online functionality requirements
Not a great article, but a very real phenomenon. I recently picked up a banned Nintendo Switch Lite for cheap -- meaning it can't download games or updates off Nintendo's servers, but it can still play cartridge games. And while most games function, there are more often than not critical fixes or significant content updates missing. The console exists in a strange sort of limbo where everything is playable but not in its best form.
The problem with Sony killing physical games (and the wider culture of digital purchases) is, unfortunately, a long-term one. Nobody will be seriously affected right now, as long as Sony's update servers are up and both digital and physical are supported. But 10, 20 years from now, both from a game preservation standpoint and from a consumer protection standpoint, this will be disastrous, when many games will still be charging outrageous prices (without the soft check of reselling/trading) or even no longer exist.
Discs don’t matter. The whole “bring back discs” thing is pointless. They’re gone. Period.
Rights matter. If we had the same rights with digital purchases we had with old physical games the disc thing would be a much much smaller issue. Would many care outside true collectors?
Don’t confuse the two. If you do, and you complain loudly enough, you’ll get the monkey’s paw version of discs. All the downsides of both, no upside at all.
Sony and other digital vendors have proven more than once that if it's digital, you are not in control regardless of legislation. Discs matter because they are the only even remotely trustworthy way of actually owning what you buy in perpetuity instead of this "renting" that we do now.
Despite whatever rights you might have now or in the future they can just hand wave all that away with update to TOS. Sure, technically speaking it might not enforceable but realistically who is going to sue? Even class action lawsuits have very little teeth because the penalties are in the region of lunch money/pocket change. Now if Sony executives went to prison for a few months after each lawsuit that might encourage some behavior changes. Monetary penalties though? It's just the cost of doing business for them. And even if you do win, do you get to keep your account? Doubt it. Good luck trying to prove in court that you were shut down in retribution since it is their platform they can and will cut you off at their convenience. That's the contract you signed when you accepted those terms of service and there is no consumer law to protect you since it is their platform.
With discs there is no middle-man and physical things have longer-standing legal precedence when it comes to protections so it is the path of least resistance for preservation of rights. Average consumer has no lobbying power to write entire new laws over digital goods and whatever gets written is reflective of what is currently in place and right now the people writing these laws are on the level of competence that they read their email from printed out paper: a physical format. Fighting for physical makes sense because the people involved with enforcing that protection understand that format better than digital.
Get a Mig Flash, rip your games, support the emulator communities, etc.
It's so easy for DRM'd games to become lost forever as the rights transfer around, and the hosting or support costs stop being worth it for publishers.
The discs have been a formality for longer than most gamers understand or want to admit. Sony is discontinuing disc sales as a response to how gamers are buying games not the other way around. So it's an irrational response but an understandable emotional response. It's a final marker of an era that realistically ended more than a decade ago. That video games are not an island: an enclosed experience of just you, the game, the console, the controller, the TV, and a bunch of wires connecting it all together. When we were kids, you had this little disc that exploded out into a world that was all your own to explore and experience. Now it's not all your own. When you bought a PlayStation 2 and some games, your relationship with Sony could end at any time and nothing would change in your day-to-day gaming experience. But today, buying a console is an ongoing relationship with the manufacturer every microsecond you play a game. And most people don't want to admit that. And ending disc production forces us to admit that old era has been dead and gone. More frighteningly, we helped it along every step of the way by overwhelmingly preferring digital downloads and always-on online games.
I don't understand how we are running into a future where I cannot buy the equivalent of "PS2 + 5 games" on a second-hand shop. That has been the main way to play games for a lot of people: buy a previous gen pack (with N games included) when the richer neighbour was upgrading to the next gen console.
How's that going to work out today or in newer generations?
If you are willing to do a bit of research, there are easily hackable models of PS3 and PS4 and then you can put dumped games on them even if the official store is gone and there's none already on there. Then you just need to worry about getting the cables and controller. On that note, modding consoles tends to make it easier to use more controllers with them by bypassing the auth. I can use all sorts of modern and DIY controllers on my modded Xbox 360 and PS3, so even when the world runs out of working original controllers, they'll be useful. Being able to play game dumps off storage also means a failing disc drive is a minor issue.
To provide a basic level of consumer protection, governments should:
1. Recognize that paying for a game implies ownership. Developers must not employ methods that remove purchased games from online stores or become otherwise unplayable.
2. Recognize the legality of cracking games to make them playable.
To put it in the classic anti-piracy "You wouldn't steal a car, would you?" terminology, we need to tell developers, "No, you can't sell us a car and then steal it. Yes, we have the right to built tools to take it back if you try."
For an FPGA project I'm working on that requires a host software program on the host computer, I've been looking into finding a way to burn the host software or source code to the fpga itself. So you'd just plug in the USB port and it would automatically open a filesystem and let you copy over the source code or even binary blob for the software so it would work in the future.
Fascinating listener comment, from a librarian to ATP, about the special legal exceptions with which libraries were equipped to have a chance against copyright and DRM tech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u11ar0649Y4&t=373s (timestamped deep-link)
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 5.3 ms ] threadThis has happened to other media, and it was inevitable that it would happen to games. What eras of movies or music do you think of when you consider those collections? Why would gaming be different?
https://discworld.starturtle.net/lpc/
the disks themselves are largely a relic already, not enough storage for some games... and I don't recall a game I've played recently that didn't require a download on first play
it would be nice to have some regulation that at least requires games to have some sort of labelling that indicates a minimum length of support for online functionality requirements
The problem with Sony killing physical games (and the wider culture of digital purchases) is, unfortunately, a long-term one. Nobody will be seriously affected right now, as long as Sony's update servers are up and both digital and physical are supported. But 10, 20 years from now, both from a game preservation standpoint and from a consumer protection standpoint, this will be disastrous, when many games will still be charging outrageous prices (without the soft check of reselling/trading) or even no longer exist.
Rights matter. If we had the same rights with digital purchases we had with old physical games the disc thing would be a much much smaller issue. Would many care outside true collectors?
Don’t confuse the two. If you do, and you complain loudly enough, you’ll get the monkey’s paw version of discs. All the downsides of both, no upside at all.
Despite whatever rights you might have now or in the future they can just hand wave all that away with update to TOS. Sure, technically speaking it might not enforceable but realistically who is going to sue? Even class action lawsuits have very little teeth because the penalties are in the region of lunch money/pocket change. Now if Sony executives went to prison for a few months after each lawsuit that might encourage some behavior changes. Monetary penalties though? It's just the cost of doing business for them. And even if you do win, do you get to keep your account? Doubt it. Good luck trying to prove in court that you were shut down in retribution since it is their platform they can and will cut you off at their convenience. That's the contract you signed when you accepted those terms of service and there is no consumer law to protect you since it is their platform.
With discs there is no middle-man and physical things have longer-standing legal precedence when it comes to protections so it is the path of least resistance for preservation of rights. Average consumer has no lobbying power to write entire new laws over digital goods and whatever gets written is reflective of what is currently in place and right now the people writing these laws are on the level of competence that they read their email from printed out paper: a physical format. Fighting for physical makes sense because the people involved with enforcing that protection understand that format better than digital.
It's so easy for DRM'd games to become lost forever as the rights transfer around, and the hosting or support costs stop being worth it for publishers.
How's that going to work out today or in newer generations?
1. Recognize that paying for a game implies ownership. Developers must not employ methods that remove purchased games from online stores or become otherwise unplayable.
2. Recognize the legality of cracking games to make them playable.
To put it in the classic anti-piracy "You wouldn't steal a car, would you?" terminology, we need to tell developers, "No, you can't sell us a car and then steal it. Yes, we have the right to built tools to take it back if you try."
Thank god we figured out the encryption on Rock Band content. Everything there is preserved now.